Dlamini told a meeting, organised by the Swaziland
National Teachers Association (SNAT) as part of the Gender Links’ 16 Days of
Activism Against Gender Based Violence campaign, that gay and lesbian pupils
and school staff were afraid to declare their status because they feared
prejudice.

The meeting in Matsapha was attended by about 300
teachers from all over the kingdom.

Dlamini said teachers and school administrators must be
supportive to gays and lesbians because they are afraid to declare their status
as they feared that their colleagues or headmasters were lacking
confidentiality.

‘So many children who are gays and lesbians fall into
cracks because their teachers are ignoring them,’ the Times of Swaziland, a newspaper independent of King Mswati, the
kingdom’s absolute monarch, reported
her saying.

‘Teachers must have the culture of tolerance in their
hearts,’ she said.

Rather than tackle the issue of prejudice and
discrimination against gays and lesbians in Swaziland, governments deny there
are gays and lesbians in the kingdom. In November 2011, Chief Mgwagwa Gamedze,
Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, said Swaziland
would not give human rights to gay people, because they did not exist in
the kingdom.

Gamedze was responding to criticism of Swaziland by a
United Nations working group on human rights that said the kingdom should enact
equality laws for LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and inter-sex)
people. Discrimination against this group of people in Swaziland is rife and
extends to workplaces, the churches and on to the streets.

HOOP (House of Our Pride), a support group for LGBTI
people,
reported to the United Nation in 2011, ‘It is a common scene for LGBTI to
be verbally insulted by by-passers in public places. [There is] defamatory name
calling and people yelling out to see a LGBTI person’s reproductive part are
some of the issues facing LGBTI in Swaziland.’

The Times of
Swaziland, part of a group of newspapers with a long history of publishing homophobic
articles, in an apparent change of attitude, welcomed Lindiwe Dlamini’s
comments on gays and lesbians in schools.

In an editorial
comment, the Times said Dlamini,
‘is simply saying that we should not judge others for the way they live their
lives but should instead provide emotional support when their lives get
complicated, as all our lives do at some point. The simple truth is that a
portion of our society is sexually attracted to members of the same sex; these
people establish relationships and suffer heartache and confusion over love
just like anybody else.

‘The only difference is that they can’t talk about it
without being judged or, sometimes, physically attacked. Our Constitution does
not address the right to sexual orientation explicitly – but it does address
the right of people to live the way they want to as long as they do not deprive
other people of their rights. Gay lifestyles fall squarely into this category.’